roy may Poems

Don’t you sometimes think it odd
That wars are fought in the name of God?
Behind religion armies hide
Claiming God is on their side
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The weather was just how I liked it
Looking like it would stay dry
The breeze had the sharp tinge of winter
Beneath a low overcast sky
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The Battle of the Atlantic

We’ve heard of the famous Mighty Hood that was sunk by a Bismarck shell
We know how many men were lost and the Skippers name as well
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Today I heard an ancient song that took me by surprise,
A song that since creation had filled our country skies.
A song that has for centuries filled mans heart with joy,
A song that brought back memories of when I was a boy.
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The air is thick with dust and flame, who started this? Who is to blame?
Shells and rockets rake the field yet neither side is like to yield
There’s no retreat, no going back, just blindly forward in attack
Men are wounded. Men lose limbs. And those who die we praise with hymns
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It seems to me the worlds gone mad
Things now are good that once were bad
These shifting values make me sad
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The pen is greater than the sword or so it’s often said.
A poet’s word still stirs the heart long after he is dead.
The 'Elegy' of Thomas Gray can still provoke a thought.
And Campbell’s 'Ullin’s Daughter' proves that anger gains you nought.
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At dawn in the misty silence I saw before me spread
Hundreds of ghostly tombstones marking out the dead
Here beneath the sodden earth they lay in eternal sleep
This is a place of sorrow where those who come here weep
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I’ve lived a full three score and ten and seen a thing or two,
of life and death and love and hurt and pleasure.
Is it just age or memory that now distorts my view
of things that I believe mankind should treasure?
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George is in his eighties and he’s seen it all before
He was born in the depression and was wounded in the war
He hadn’t been a hero, but George had done his bit
His legs had both been broken when a piece of shrapnel hit
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